Do you accidentally say similar sounding words or words that

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start with the same letter?

If I want to say something without thinking about it prior, I often accidentally use a word that starts with the same letter as the correct word. I might intend to say that I have many books and instead say that I have many bones. Or I say a similar sounding word.

Yess happens to me, this is one reson why I tend to think ahead of what I will say, though sometimes I will then say words wrong that were in my head. And if someone would wonder how I got to saying that word I could not explain it to them.

Not exactly... I change, but something very near happens to me. I change the nouns of a sentence to some other that resembles what I intended to say, or by shape, or by color, or by category. I could call a "music score", "text". "Microwave" by "fireplace", I can't remember others, but people laugh at me. But this happens maybe because I am very visual, and the right word doesn't pop up fast enough.
I misplace the words in sentences too, like "I will take the walk for a dog" (Yoda like) and I always change the color names (there is no brown in my vocabulary)... people that knows me doesn't care about it anymore, they "understand" what I mean. "I like the gray pants" usually means the brown one.

BTW This is the very "Erickson's" way of talk... I'm not so much ret*d... I got a Philosophy degree and I am getting a Chemistry degree now. Always the best of my class, and this does not happen when I write. Writing I only have problems to use only one language at a time, I speak almost 5 languages that I taught myself and the first word that happens in my mind isn't a Portuguese one.

Last edited by ericksonlk on 20 Jul 2008, 9:22 am, edited 1 time in total.

I do things like that too. I misplace words a lot. Or I call something that is blue red or yellow. I think I do this for the same reason I get words mixed up the way that I described in my first post.

I know if something is wrong after having said it, but if I don't check the words and just talk, my language gets mixed up.

The time I need to check is so short that others don't notice at all. But it's quite annoying and tiring to check.

I also have no idea why I say things wrong.

It has nothing to do with what I think about. The mistakes are totally random.

Good to hear that I'm not the only one that misplace color names... I sometimes thought that I should have some brain injury but the brain scan was normal

I can't check it until I've said it... you deal better with it. It's actually very hard to fix the sentence, I have to make some tries until it becomes grammatical...

I don't go with things that start with the same letter, but if my brain gets too far ahead of my mouth, sometimes I forget what I am talking about. So I make up a description of what I'm talking about: "burrito-wrapper" for tortilla, "intelligent typewriter" for computer.

People who know me just grin and move on, but if someone doesn't know me, they will spend a long time trying to puzzle out what I am talking about. And here I thought "burrito-wrapper" was fairly self-explanatory ...

Do you think that this kind of think is AS related? If so would explain a lot my odd talk...

Perhaps.

From what you've said, though, your problem might be interference. You mentioned speaking several languages. Is it possible that in searching for the words, you are coming up with the right term in the wrong language and have to translate it? Whenever I study a language that is not my own, I end up doing that a lot. You get some weird syntax issues because translation - and the grammatical structure - isn't always accurate.

Just a thought.

Actually, Yoda spoke like "Take the dog for a walk, I will.". It wasn't WRONG, just odd. I tried to do a similar thing in my last job. WHY? Because I would either get the whole idea out, or make it clear I wasn't done. OTHERWISE, people ran off "half-cocked"! Maybe the idea of yoda doing that was the same.



OK, THAT explains it! "no" in the above sentence, for example, in spanish, and I THINK portuguese, also means NOT! If I spoke german like I spoke english, Germans would think I was stupid or something. If I directly translated spanish idioms into english, Americans wouldn't understand me, and would think it very odd. And I am NOT about to use Spanish grammar in English. It is now tolerated but STILL sounds stupid and low class.

BTW I use to NEVER use the wrong word. Even today, I think I usually don't. BTW I told a German last friday "Ihr Deutsch ist ausgezeichnet!" I MEANT to say "Ihr Englisch ist ausgezeichnet!" ! Talk about FUNNY! It IS VERY common to switch words if you speak several languages though.

LOL... this was a typing error... in portuguese we have "não" meaning "not"... but spanish grammar is very related to portuguese (italian and french too). Thanks a lot!

YEAH, I thought there might be a difference there. I only have a passing glance at portuguese. That is a pity too, because I am now near boston, and there are a LOT of portuguese people there.

Still, não is similar to no. French has "ne .. pas" and "non", so there is definitely a difference there.

Still, what I said is certainly true. And YEP, I HAVE met people like archie on "all in the family". I don't remember him saying most of these, and SOME are probably simply to express a position, etc... (terlit is the way SOME americans said toilet. It is an ACCENT!(MY "accent" pronounces it toylet, with oil being almost like the similarly spelled word. Some American accents do funny things with "r"s. Some, DO pronounce oi like er in places like this.) shemoglobins is just STUPIDITY how some might replace HE with SHE... ) The idea of "iminent (intimate)" is the kind of thing YOU are speaking of. Two VALID words that sound similar, but one is used even though the meaning is different. BTW All the actual example I gave here he DID use on the show. They tried to make him look about as stupid and low class as possible. Even in some shows where they try to make the characters seem SMART, the writers may mess up, or the actors do, and they keep it. Still, for your enjoyment:

http://www.allinthefamilysit.com/archie ... otes.shtml

BTW Please realize that Americans, on the whole, are NOT that stupid, and this site is certainly not a course on speaking english.